Release of the new Debian 5.0, codenamed “Lenny”, has been postponed. Scheduled for September, Lenny still suffers from too many release critical problems (RC bugs), and until these bugs are fixed, there will be no “Lenny”.

Developer Alexander Reichle-Schmehl is trying to rally support. In a mail on the developer list he explains the problems in detail and asks for help in getting Debian released “in this quarter at least.” The complete text can be found on his blog.

As well as asking developers to take their own bugs to task, he also asks for assistance in fixing RC bugs from other developers. He asks for an update from Etch to Lenny with notification of any problems because the update has hardly been tested. The release notes are also still missing a detailed description. With the devscripts package, users can check if packages with critical bugs have been installed on their system. They can then verify the bug and actively help to fix it.

Last but not least, Alexander asks maintainers to refrain from uploading new upstream versions of packages to Sid because, apart from wasting the build daemons time, they have no chance of reaching Lenny anyway. Also, uploading new packages makes it harder for other, dependant packages, to migrate to Lenny.

The Debian 5.0 release missed its intended deadline of September and the project has been silent as yet about any news of an update. The latest guess from developers' circles is that "Lenny" will not be ready until June of 2009.